'A TSUNAMI OF TV SHOWS....'
23 February 2009

Tuesday, 17th February 2009
London. BBC. BRITs Rehearsal.

I find myself amid a tsunami of TV shows. I did pre-production on FOUR of them today - two at the BBC, a conference call with Le Grand Journal for 'Canal +', the Parisian TV station and then down to Earls Court for the rehearsal of the Brit Awards. I'm approaching the point where they're all starting to blur into one, so please don't ask any specific questions. At one point I got my weeks mixed up and I thought that on Thursday I had to be focusing lights in the BBC radio theatre, whilst also being on a train to Paris and at the Jonathan Ross show.

It's a curious experience to be part of a team behind an appearance on one of these big TV awards shows. Many of the elements are familiar (and, in the case of the Brits and the Grammys, are in venues which U2 have played on tour) but the fact of our involvement taking up just four-and-a-half minutes screen time of a two hour show inevitably alters the playing field dramatically. On tour we obviously arrange the entire enterprise to serve U2's performance, but here we have so little control over what goes on that often, in the early days of doing these shows, the best you could hope for was damage limitation. Happily things have moved on, and many of the people involved are friends of ours who want to give us all the help possible, but even so we have to respect the fact that they have a huge amount of things to cram into the available time other than the U2 slot.

We got everything ready on the Brits stage, then the band threw themselves into it. After three run-throughs of 'Get On Your Boots', the whole of U2 invaded the video truck to watch the playback. This has become standard procedure for us and it generally proves to be very productive, though, I sense, comes as quite a surprise for the TV engineers. As well as giving direct feedback to the TV director it gives the band a chance to see how their performance looks on 'stage-de-jour', see how any new clothing choices look and to get an overall feel for what's working, before going back out to the stage for a final run at it. Today's viewing was very positive and it's clear that everyone in the truck was quite delighted to have the whole band pile in there. As we left I couldn't help wonder if any other artists would take so much trouble, but then I wondered equally - why ever would they not? Having gone to all the effort of travelling to the event and rehearsing, it doesn't seem like much of an extra mile to go to give yourself the best chance of a great performance under challenging circumstances. Anyway, hopefully that'll set us up for tomorrow.

'VIEW FROM THE CORRIDOR'
25 February 2009

Wednesday, 18th February 2009
London. Brit Awards, Earls Court.

A little known aspect of big TV awards shows is the disproportionate amount of time spent hanging around in corridors. They actually build extra corridors especially for the event, to maximise the corridor-hanging opportunities. There's a simple reason - a regular gig comes with a huge quantity of rooms available for band dressing rooms, hospitality, offices, crew rooms, you name it. However, when 30 acts are sharing a venue with the massive production team required to stage one of these events, the available space shrinks to almost nothing. Consequently, the producers build an entire 'farm' of office-cubicle-like rooms backstage, which becomes a hive of temporary dressing rooms. U2 had two rooms; a lounge room and a smaller changing room. The rest of our touring party is welcome to use them too, but clearly there are long periods of time when we want to give the band some space. In the absence of anywhere else to go we end up hanging in the corridor.
The corridor-view does provide an interesting perspective, though. The overall ambience of the multi-corridored dressing room area is that of a very well attended 'festival of doors'. There are doors everywhere, accompanied by oversized signage indicating who might be slumped on a rented couch behind the potted palms within. We were opposite Duffy's room, then further down the corridor were Girls Aloud, with Kings of Leon round the corner, Pet Shop Boys a little further afield, and so on. It's busy too, as people come and go to the stage, to the make-up room, or catering, or the spiffed up port-a-loos. Sitting on the floor, laptop on knees, gets to be like a real life version of flipping through Hello! magazine. Coldplay pottering about, the girls from All Saints coming to visit, Kylie charming as ever. When James Corden and Matt Horne went by, both wearing red mini-dresses and thigh-length black vinyl boots I began to wonder quite where I was.
U2 were on first which is always a bonus - a little like getting your homework done on Friday night so you have the rest of the weekend to play. It went well, looked good in the truck and Gavin Friday texted in to say he thought it came over well on the telly. We returned to the dressing room for a lower-case moment of celebration then relaxed into the rest of the evening. News came in of a five star album review from Rolling Stone ... we're only a week or so away from release.



Thursday, 19th February 2009
London/Paris/London. Recce for "Le Grand Journal" at Canal +, TV Studios.

Steve from management, Jake our production manager and I rendezvoused at St. Pancras railway station at the unholy hour of 8am to get the train to Paris. For reasons which never became apparent, despite making the booking at one time, we were seated all three separately, Jake in an entirely different carriage, which had me pondering train travel as a metaphor for life. On arrival, we headed for the TV studios of the 'Canal +' station and found our way to the studio of "Le Grand Journal" culture show.
We were met by the producers, director and technicians from the show, all of whom were extremely helpful. We figured out how the stage layout would be placed and I ran through the few basic points which I have learned to offer up as a guide to what works when shooting U2 for live television. It's a simple approach, which allows a good deal of local interpretation, so most TV stations appreciate the direction.
We were in and out of there in under an hour. It seems like a long way to come for a brief meeting, but even in these days of cellphone videoconferencing, there's still nothing quite so useful as a look at the space and a face to face chat. Jake headed for Charles de Gaulle airport to head on to Berlin to load in our equipment for the Echo awards rehearsal tomorrow, whilst Steve and I headed back to the Gare du Nord where we just managed to miss the 14.30 train. The next one wasn't until 16.30pm so we were forced to retire to the highly acceptable Terminus du Nord restaurant for a splendid white tablecloth lunch.
Back in London I had an evening engagement to see 'Avenue Q' at the Noel Coward theatre on St. Martin's Lane. It's a musical featuring depraved muppets and a great deal of very adult humour. I've never been a great fan of anything involving puppetry, but despite being such strange concept it was pretty entertaining all the same.

'EASY LIKE SUNDAY MORNING'
02 March 2009

Friday, 20th February 2009
London/Berlin. Echo Awards Rehearsal.

An early alarm pulled me out of a deep dream, something to do with being on a boat with "the bad idea bears" from 'Avenue Q'. Got up and hailed a cab to take me to Paddington Station, then onto the Heathrow Express (train) to beat the rush hour traffic.

Found my way to the British Airways lounge and knowing that several of our party were on this flight, I figured I'd just wander about in a daze until somebody called my name. Within minutes Frances, our tour press person, did just that so I sat with her as we both futzed with our laptops trying to locate the free Wi-Fi.
The flight was pleasantly uneventful. I worked on the Herald Tribune crossword, dozed, vegged out. Frances informed me I was sitting behind Taylor Swift, a country-pop singer of some note in the U.S. Descending into Berlin, the city was covered in thick snow, which was still falling at an impressive rate. On arrival at the surprisingly miniature Tegel airport we did the bag scramble and found our way to the inevitable waiting van. Billy Bragg was at baggage claim. No, really.

We headed to the hotel for a while and as I was beginning to feel the effects of another early morning, I decided to take advantage of the amply sized bathtub. It only occurred to me when I was wallowing in the suds that the last time I had a bath in this hotel I got a text message telling me that London was being blown up (7th July 2005).
Down to the venue mid-afternoon where it was clear that things were running a very great distance behind schedule. I was tempted to go back to the hotel but having got here through the snow I figured this was as good a place to hang around as any. I went to find the relevant people to assure me that all was well with the technical side of our performance. I was temporarily unsettled by not being able to locate anyone who knew anything about U2 having a video playback piece and received increasingly blank looks when enquiring about the facility for the video running in sync, timecode, Protools, and so forth. I took my appeal to a higher court and eventually found the producer of the event whom I had met a couple of weeks ago when I came out here to recce the gig. Finally I was introduced to the right people and assured all was well. It's all fine, just another factor in being part of an event of which we occupy such a small percentage of the whole. Not to mention doing so many of these in a row, where essentially you have to make up a stage production out of a different set of parts every day.

The long delay continued, so on hearing the strains of "Easy Like Sunday Morning", I wandered back out onto the arena floor to watch Lionel Ritchie's camera rehearsal. He was looking good, I thought, and in good humour. He was dueting on a love ballad with a German singer whom he had never met before but still made a pretty convincing job of it.
Eventually our moment came and U2 took the stage. The band got four runs at 'Boots', each time the whole thing coalescing more and more. As usual I was watching the TV monitors with the director and he seemed to be all over it. It always takes a few runs to get on top of the camera angles and lighting but there was good energy in his cutting right from the start, which was very promising.

Finally we were done; it was midnight and we'd been due to wrap up at 8pm. Back at the hotel a few of us gathered in the lobby bar and had a drink or two. Telling stories, unwinding, talking about what's ahead. It was all very pleasant and then it was all very 3am.

ROOFTOPS WE HAVE LOVED
05 March 2009

Wednesday, 25th February 2009
London. BBC recce.

Up early to go back to BBC Broadcasting House for a final recce of the two shows we're doing there on Friday. One is quite straightforward, as it's in the radio theatre and is essentially a radio broadcast with a couple of cameras looking on. The second is a performance on the roof of the building. U2 are no strangers to the odd roof top, but what makes this particularly challenging is that we're kicking off at 18.30, when it will just about be fully dark. It's a surprise gig so there clearly can't be any soundcheck, and as it'll be daylight up until half an hour before they go on, there won't be any opportunity for lighting focus, programming, white balance or camera rehearsal... what could possibly go wrong?

In the afternoon I met a man called Nick who is going to be the crew chief for the lighting department on the U2 tour. I gave him my whole 'show and tell' presentation, which illustrates the staging design and whole idea of the show. I've done this a few times now, as you can imagine, but every time I do it I can feel adrenaline rising. We've still got an awful lot to do over the next four months, but I just can't wait to see this thing in the flesh. Nick got through it without laughing out loud or running screaming from the room, so I think that means he's willing to take on the challenge.

Thursday, 26th February 2009
London. Comic Relief. Jonathan Ross.

There's a tangible sense of rising mania amongst our happy throng. Happy we certainly are, as extremely positive album reviews continue to roll in and all seems to be going to plan, but I am relieved to find that I am far from alone in feeling increasingly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of activity. Two TV shows a day seems to have become the norm and the band are adding photo shoots and countless interviews on top of this. Plus of course they're squeezing meetings in between in order to stave off the vast quantity of crucial deadlines stampeding towards us all. Little wonder it's all becoming faintly surreal.

As TV shows go, this has not been my favourite day. It started well, with the warm feeling of childhood nostalgia which always accompanies a visit to BBC Television Centre ("Wood Lane, London W1A 1AA..." as they used to say on Blue Peter). They've built on a huge, modern glass-box complex now, but the central core of the building remains a brick cylinder around a circular courtyard with fountain and mad modernist figurative sculpture, expressing the aspirations of the golden age of broadcasting.

As I've said every day this week, the hallmark of this kind of TV show is the lack of control which we have over the situation and today was particularly uphill work. We shot two things; In the afternoon, a version of 'Boots' for broadcast on a special edition of Top of the Pops for Comic Relief (a UK charity famous for its biannual "Red Nose Day"), then in the evening, the Jonathan Ross Show. To be honest, I wasn't thrilled with the way it looked on camera, but hopefully the TV directors will pull something decent out of it.

On another note, there was a great and glorious victory today in that a decision was made as to the colour of the structure for the touring stage. I appreciate this doesn't sound very exciting, but it was the last major design element of the 'real' show which needed to be confirmed. Mark Fisher (my co-designer and the tour's architect) came down to the BBC and amid the madness of the day we managed a three-minute meeting with the band, which proved to be exactly long enough to make the decision. I am so excited about the forthcoming live show that I can barely breathe.

After a monumentally long day I got the tube home, which was pleasantly anti-climatic after a full-on TV day. Two more to do tomorrow...


Friday, 27th February 2009
London. BBC Radio Theatre. BBC Rooftop.

This turned out to be a great day and quite fun in a ludicrous sort of a way. Up at the crack of dawn again to get to BBC Broadcasting House. (This is the home of BBC radio, as opposed to BBC television where we were yesterday.) The iconic building is situated just off the junction of Regent Street and Oxford Street, smack in the middle of London's glittering West End. It is all roundy art deco, with an imposing fade featuring an illuminated clock face, a sculpture by Eric Gill, and several balconies which face directly down Regent Street. On the uppermost of said balconies, on the seventh floor, U2 had decided it would be fun to play a gig, adding to their collection of 'rooftops we have loved'.

This sounds like a cute idea and I was rather hoping that they would play during the day in broad daylight, which woulds take the pressure off the lighting department but no; clearly the best time to play would be drive time commuter hour on a Friday night, just after dark. Consequently I had to light the performance, so had been formulating a plan all week. In the end I decided that soft, diffuse, small lighting fixtures up close would be the best bet, as opposed to big fixtures on the buildings opposite. The notion of relying on radio communications to control operators on several high buildings sounded like it had far too great a degree of Spinal Tap potential. Consequently, all the lighting had to be placed on the balcony itself, along with the sound system, backline amps and drum kit, audio monitors, sound desk, two camera operators and a remote control camera. Oh, and the band. This was not a large space so you can only imagine the magnitude of the clusterfuck up there but, perhaps surprisingly, attitudes remained calm and tempers unfrayed. The sun came out and I think the view helped too what a remarkable place to spend a sunny afternoon, the whole of London laid out before us.

Just to keep us on our toes, U2 were also playing a show in the Radio Theatre earlier in the day. This is a small theatre which has been used for recording radio programmes with a live audience since the year dot. Milestones of British comedy and culture have been recorded there and the place recently restored to its art deco glory. I've long thought that lighting for radio would be one of the great career paths, up there with the Jamaican bobsleigh team, and today I got my chance. In fairness, there were TV cameras present so my task had some sense of purpose and of course the live audience deserved some aesthetically obedient ambience too. U2 played four songs in a short session hosted by Jo Whiley and all went well. It was exciting to hear some of the new songs for the first time in anything like a real gig setting. It looked good on camera too.

The roof appearance was clearly going to be far more of a challenge, in terms of capturing it for the cameras, as there could be absolutely no soundcheck or rehearsal. I had been banking on having even fifteen minutes of semi-darkness prior to the gig so I could at least focus the lights and get some notion of what this was going to look like on camera. However, as soon as we started turning lights on, my walkie-talkie exploded with histrionic messages from Westminster Council that "absolutely no lights must be turned on until the performance starts". This, I thought, might be tricky.

There are two parts to making good-looking TV pictures. As with a movie camera (or even a stills camera for that matter), there is the lighting aspect combined with the settings on the camera itself. In television there is a video engineer who controls all of the camera settings from a central control desk. S/he can adjust the iris to make the pictures brighter or darker and has a whole host of filters and effects which can radically affect the way the picture looks. Creating the pictures requires skill in both aspects, hence the moviemaking term "lighting cameraman". A big part of the Russian roulette aspect of the past few weeks of TV shows has been working with a different video engineer at every show; it's a crucial role, the difference between glamour and horror on screen. Today's video engineer was a young guy called Peter who became the saviour of the project. When he realised that we were just going to have to wing it 100%, far from panicking, he seemed quite amused that this rock group of global stature were going to appear on live TV with zero preparation. He also turned out to be very good at making TV pictures so the rooftop appearance ended up looking great. I left very happy and headed straight for the pub.

Saturday, 28th February 2009
London/New York. BA 177.

Fortunately woke up early this morning as, when I came round, I realised that I had to leave for New York and hadn't even thought about packing. I've got the packing process down to about 20 minutes, as I always pack enough essentials (i.e. underwear) for three weeks. There are two reasons for this; i) I can do this on 100% autopilot, whilst messing with the formula by engaging the conscious mind will only lead to mistakes, and ii) if you have enough for three weeks, you can continue indefinitely.

At Heathrow airport I ran into David Walliams (of 'Little Britain', with whom I have worked) who was ahead of me in the queue for boarding, so we said our hellos and had a brief chat. Whenever I see him I can't help thinking "this man has swum the English Channel", a physical activity entirely beyond my comprehension.

Watched a documentary on the flight about Roxy Music which I thoroughly enjoyed. Ironically it opens with Bono talking about them, expressing an admiration for them which was echoed through the programme by many of his contemporaries. It's a great documentary, featuring interviews with all the original members, including Brian Eno.

I absolutely loved Roxy Music. For the teenage me there was T.Rex, Mott the Hoople, David Bowie and Roxy. The timing of their existence was perfect for my growing up; Virginia Plain was released just as I was aged 12 and starting secondary school (high school). In complete endorsement of Bono's sentiments, seeing them on Top of the Pops was like watching the arrival of a spaceship of aliens from planet glamour. We knew it was all make-believe but it certainly sorted out our stylistic aspirations until punk rock kicked in (conveniently as I was just leaving school.)

On arrival at JFK it was clear that winter here is far from over. Snow was falling as I rode into the city and an icy wind was cutting through the place. Ambitions for the evening were low, so I tucked up in my hotel room for the evening and ordered room service.

'TRAPPED IN PARADISE'
10 March 2009

Sunday, 1st March 2009
New York.

Woke up early with the jet lag, so strolled up Broadway to the Moonrock diner, picking up a New York Times en route. I texted my friend Penny, who lives in the apartment building above the diner, to see if she could join me whenever she woke up.
I did the American breakfast thing and had a go at the crossword, whilst watching the gentle snowfall outside. There was a large article by John Pareles about U2 in the Sunday Arts section that had a great line 'after 30 years they still want to be the Next Big Thing' which pretty much says it all.
Some hours later Penny appeared and we strolled up to the big Barnes & Noble near Lincoln Centre. By mid-afternoon I was beginning to fade so headed back to find my pillow. The evening saw the arrival of Tom, the tour's video director, who is here to help with all the promo work this week. Spent the evening inhaling sushi and planning world domination. Froze our arses off walking home through the increasingly heavy snow.


Monday, 2nd March 2009
New York. David Letterman Show (x 2)

Woke up to a world in white, as a full on blizzard has swept into New York City. There's about a foot of snow, which of course makes everything look spectacular. It was 'another day, another TV show', or actually another two TV shows in this case. We headed down to the Ed Sullivan Theater at Broadway & 53rd, long-time home of 'The Late Show with David Letterman'.
I'd been a little apprehensive, this being New York and all, wondering how open the house team would be to our input. As ever, I did the rounds and met everyone, whilst sussing out who might be the guy to help us. It turned out that everyone was most welcoming and Tim, the house lighting chief, was very amenable to what we had to say. We had two shows to do, as Letterman goes out every week night, but for some reason they tape the Friday show on Monday. First up was 'Breathe' which the band ran through three times. Generally I was encouraged, but the 'key light' (the main light for lighting the actual performers) needed work to give it the kind of look that we like in U2-land. We didn't quite get it right for the actual take, but it wasn't disastrous (and thinking back to Jonathan Ross, it was positively glorious.) However, Tim and his team took all our comments on board and really ran with it. Next up was 'Boots' with which I was more than happy. It was also a very good feeling to know that we're going to be in here all week and the house team have already grasped how we like to do things.
The show contained lots of snow jokes, given that the city was knee deep in it by this time. They shot a clip of the four members of U2 shovelling snow out on 53rd street, which was pretty funny
The day's brief moments of intense activity were, as ever, interspersed with long periods of standing in corridors. This building wasn't made to accommodate the quantity of people required to do a show like this, let alone when you add in all of our lot. The band has a small suite of dressing rooms on the sixth floor but it's all incredibly cramped and tiny, so the bulk of us end up back in the corridor for much of the time. They do a good line in stairwells at the Ed Sullivan Theater too, so we had plenty to choose from. Even the band's catering tables were spread out in an upstairs corridor!



Tuesday, 3rd March 2009
New York. David Letterman Show.

Had a meeting with my fledgling tour video team this morning, which was very productive. As usual, the video control system for the forthcoming tour is a work of technical wizardry, which all has to be custom made for us. 'Smasher', our video technical director, has joined us from Belgium for the week, so we are hopeful that we'll get the thing nailed by Friday.
This occupied the morning so we decided to run out for some lunch before heading to Letterman for 2pm. At the end of the block, we saw a crowd gathered at the corner of Broadway and 53rd. On closer inspection we saw the crowd was surrounding a small podium containing the whole of U2 and Mayor Bloomberg, plus about a hundred TV cameras. This, we discovered, was an unveiling ceremony for a new street sign, as this block of 53rd street was being renamed 'U2 Way'. There was a countdown and someone pulled a piece of string revealing the shiny new green sign.
Tom, Smasher and I saw that the crowd was about to disperse, so we ducked into an OK looking French place to have lunch. We'd not been in there ten minutes when we saw an absurd quantity of police and armed guards (black helmets, machine guns, the whole bit) flocking right outside the window. For a moment I thought we'd been transported to Baghdad, but it turned out to be the mayor entering this same restaurant, bringing with him the whole of U2. Honestly, you can't go anywhere in New York these days without falling over a member of U2.
Back at Letterman the band played through 'Magnificent' a couple of times for the camera rehearsal. It's really looking pretty interesting, given the parameters, so I feel we are in good hands here. After the show taping we stood around in corridors for a couple of hours, then decamped to a reception area to film U2 singing 'Guantanamera' as CBS telephone 'hold' music. This is starting to be quite fun.



Wednesday, 4th March 2009
New York. David Letterman Show.

Started the day by meeting with the lighting supply company for the tour, who have gradually been coming to terms with the magnitude of the project. They now also understand the fact that the staging set up is so radically different from the norm that none of us can make assumptions about how everything will come together - traditional methods simply will not apply.
One thing which has made me laugh is that the stage design has already earned its nickname. Above the performing area is a huge four-legged structure that effectively straddles the football field, from which all the paraphernalia of the show is suspended (this in lieu of a roof, being outdoors and all.) I've been working on this, off and on, for about two and a half years now, having shown the band the first drawings whilst we were still on the Vertigo tour. During the evolution of the structure it has, at various times, come to resemble several different things; a dockyard crane, a cactus, a giant crab, the Theme Building at Los Angeles airport. It went very Louise Bourgeois for a while, then a little space age. In its final incarnation though, its sleek curves and four talon-like legs have been dubbed "The Claw", remembering the fairground machine from Toy Story. This really amused me, spawning a fantasy of it descending and grabbing members of the audience, all of whom, presumably, would have three eyes.
Anyway, I digress. After the lighting meeting I went to see a projector demonstration - not something for the U2 tour but an interesting new gizmo which I wanted to go and have a look at for future reference. This was followed by a video meeting, and then another video meeting. The tour is still three months away, but a great many decisions now need to be made every single day, it seems.
Tune-de-jour at Letterman was 'I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight', getting its first airing. Tim and his lighting team had really pushed the boat out, creating an interesting and (for a TV chat show) highly radical look for the song. This was a good demonstration of something that David Letterman said on air, during the show; 'Having U2 here is like a shot of electricity to the whole place - they just make everybody better.' Generous words indeed. When you're right in the thick of it, it's easy to forget just how hard this band strives to make everything the best it can be and that kind of energy tends to spread.
There's a huge amount to do just now, both for future promo appearances and for the real tour. I was hoping to sneak home at the weekend, but a U2 radio appearance in Boston next Wednesday just turned into a film shoot, so I'm going to have to stay on and get involved. Here we are. Trapped in Paradise.

'THIS CAN'T BE NORMAL, SURELY?'
13 March 2009

Thursday, 5th March 2009
New York. David Letterman Show.

Started the day with another tour video system meeting (well, why not?) before heading to Letterman for our last day. I think it's safe to say that we all feel a little sad at finishing the run. Its been a good time, good people, nice corridors. Amongst today's extra-curricular activities was a meeting to decide on the tour artwork. They've signed off on the name of the tour, being simply 'U2360' to indicate the nature of the production, and as a break from the last couple of tours which were named after singles. The artwork features a silhouette of 'The Claw' (the stage design) which I'm quietly rather chuffed about.
U2 played 'Beautiful Day' on Letterman and then played 'Vertigo' just for the audience at the theatre, which was a great way to end - playing on the same stage that hosted so many iconic acts for the Ed Sullivan Show, not least The Beatles.
After the taping I slipped away to go and see Laurie Anderson perform a short set at the opening of an installation in SoHo. On the way there I was struck by the fact of having been in New York for nearly a week and never having left mid-town. In fact I'd never left 53rd / 54th streets, which goes some way to explaining the cabin fever which is descending. This is also being stoked by the terrifying prospect of a 5am alarm call for the Good Morning America appearance tomorrow. How can this be? We are creatures of the night. Mind you, I felt slightly better when I heard the backline guys have a 2.30am call in order to get all the gear there and set up. Can't see many of them going to bed tonight.



Friday, 6th March 2009
New York. Good Morning America.

Good god, the 5am alarm. I joined the stunned throng in the lobby at 6.01am and was delighted to find I wasn't the last for the six o'clock call.
We piled into vans ('get me in the van, get me in the van, get me in the van, van, meet me in the van') and headed out to the Bronx and the campus of Fordham University. Good Morning America was broadcasting their breakfast show live from Fordham, with the programme being built around a live performance from U2. As we rolled into campus the sun was just rising above the trees, which has to be a first for arriving at a gig.
The university campus is beautiful and all very Harry Potter, with a big central green. A stage had been built on the steps of the building facing said green and, even at this unholy hour, a couple of thousand students were out on the lawn (very clearly still up from Thursday night.) There were lights and cameras by the shed-load, so Tom, our video director, and I went to find the video truck and the show's TV director. Being a daylight show I was pretty relaxed about it all and on meeting the director had complete confidence that he'd make it look good.
We had been given the use of a couple of rooms, so made ourselves at home. It's a beautiful place and quite grand in a faux-gothic sort of a way. It'd be easy to feel learned in a place like this. Lots of people were milling around, I was introduced to a couple of people from Blackberry who are going to be working with us on the tour, so hopefully between us we'll dream up some fun things to do.
The band, astonishingly, were in great form, all dressed up and ready to go. By sharp contrast, we the staff were all halfway out of our minds and barely awake, but surfing the energy of it. A few of us decided to watch proceedings on the TV in the principle's office, as there was so little space in the video truck. The actual stage was right outside the window, so we had it coming at us from all angles, with a fifteen second delay between the live performance and the broadcast which was very strange indeed.
Good Morning America had been broadcasting to the nation for an hour or so when U2 took the stage. The ripped into Boots, Magnificent and Crazy, all of which went to plan and the kids, of course, loved it. There was then a break for commercials and some other features, during which I'm sure U2 would have preferred to just keep playing, but given that these other show items were being broadcast from right next to the stage this wasn't an option. In the principle's office we kept watching, and the programme moved on to an item featuring celebrity chef Mario Batali making spaghetti carbonara in the open air. I don't own a TV (ironically) so am unused to the onslaught of American breakfast television, but this struck me as utterly surreal. U2 play three songs, then a large bearded man in sunglasses makes spaghetti outdoors, by the side of the stage, at eight o'clock in the morning. In sunglasses. This can't be normal, surely?
After the spaghetti incident, U2 were interviewed on stage then closed the broadcast with Beautiful Day, before playing a couple more songs for the live audience on campus. It looked beautiful on TV, all bathed in a golden light, so everyone was happy.
The band had more interviews and media things to do, so Tom and I sloped off and got the train back into Manhattan. All I wanted to do was go back to bed but I have this show in Boston to organize for Wednesday. It's a radio show which has now become a film shoot, so we have to get a plan together ever so quickly. Tom and I had a late breakfast and drew our plans all over the paper tablecloth, so the stage set might now feature some giant marmalade stains if we're lucky. I drew up a lighting plot, emailed it to a local Boston lighting supplier about whom I know absolutely nothing, then finally put my head down for an hour. In the evening the band threw a dinner for our whole touring party to say thank you and to celebrate an exceptional week in New York. Honestly, you couldn't kick over a rock in New York this week without finding a member of U2 lurking underneath it. Went to bed with the sneaking suspicion that I might actually have a day off tomorrow...